When their routine was over, and Mr. Heinz shouted, “Let’s make some noise for the sophomores,” Jen scanned the gym for Juliana, finally finding her on the sidelines, cheering the sophomore guys on as they ran out to the center of the floor.
The guys all froze into different poses. “Barbie Girl” started blasting, and for those three minutes, Jen forgot Susan, forgot Ethan McCready, forgot how much everything sucked. Juliana had outdone herself. The guys were actually kind of good, and their strutting and preening had the crowd whooping and laughing.
Next to her, Christine Verni was giggling so uncontrollably she had to grab Jen’s arm for support. Jen smiled, the first real one she’d had in ages, and cheered along, cupping her hands around her mouth and hollering out to her guy friends who were dancing.
And then it was over. Jen couldn’t wait to pounce on Jules, to tell her what a fucking fantastic job she’d done. Jen got up from the bleachers and ran down to the floor. She scanned the crowd around her for Juliana’s hot-pink T-shirt, but there was only a sea of red-clad junior girls.
When she was positive Juliana wasn’t among them, Jen looked at the side door. It was swinging shut; Mr. Heinz and Mrs. Coughlin didn’t seem to notice, distracted by the scene the junior kickline was now making in the center of the gym. The guys were dressed as firefighters, suspenders stretched over their bare chests, and Mrs. Coughlin’s face was the same shade as their plastic costume hats.
“We specifically told you everyone had to be clothed,” she was shouting at them as Jen snuck by, hurrying out the side door before anyone could notice and try to stop her.
The rear parking lot was full of cars, and empty except for two girls hanging out by the soccer field, their backs to the fence as if they didn’t want to be seen.
Even though she was hundreds of feet away and it was dark, Jen could see the neon pink of Juliana’s T-shirt. A sharp, high-pitched laugh told Jen who Jules’s companion was, even though she already knew.
Carly and Juliana didn’t notice Jen at the curb; a couple of other kids were there also, waiting around for rides home. Kids with strict ten p.m. curfews. Jen kept her eye on Juliana and Carly and ducked behind an SUV about ten feet away from the fence.
“Your mom won’t notice some are missing?” Juliana asked.
“No. Her doctor gives her, like, sixty a month,” Carly said.
Juliana fell quiet for a moment. “Should I mix this with alcohol?”
“It’s fine,” Carly said. “I do it all the time, and that’s like the weakest dose.”
Jen was still processing what Carly had said when a black pickup truck pulled up to where the girls were standing. Jen craned her neck around the side of the SUV, but the tinted windows of the truck blocked Jen from getting a look at the driver.
“Took you long enough,” a male voice from inside the truck said.
“Sorry. Precious Jules had to watch her boy ballerinas perform.”
“Male kickline,” Juliana corrected her. The driver roared with laughter; Carly joined in, and Juliana started to say something, but the door to the pickup truck slammed, cutting her off.
Pills. Jen took her hand off the SUV, worried she’d leave a streak of sweat on it. Pills: She knew it. Carly Amato was a druggie.
She wanted to shout out to Juliana, let her know she was watching. Maybe then Jules wouldn’t get into that truck with God knows who, doing God knows what kind of pills. But her throat had locked up, and all she could do was watch her best friend she had left get into a truck so big it seemed to swallow her whole.
Sunday morning, I head downstairs and through the garage. My old neighborhood is about five miles away, and the idea of being alone with my thoughts for however long it takes me to bike there is unbearable. I stick my earbuds in and pull up the last playlist I made and shuffle the songs.
The opening bars of the song about a blue-eyed boy and a brown-eyed girl. I’d made this playlist the night Brandon dropped me off. I yank the earbuds out, suddenly okay with silence. Toss my phone into the basket of my bike and hop on.
There’s a chill in the air today, and the sky is pearly gray with low-hanging clouds.
I need to find out what happened to Ethan McCready after he got expelled. He knows where we live, and I want to even the score.
I pedal through town and back down familiar roads, until my old house comes up on the right, and my breath catches in my chest. The new owners have decorated the lawn with fake tombstones etched with names like BARRY’D ALIVE.
A grim reaper dangles from the porch overhang, its cloak rippling in the breeze. I think about knocking on the door. Anything for a glimpse inside.
Norwood Drive was known as the street of horrors after Juliana and Susan were killed here. But I couldn’t see it that way—I wasn’t home the night of the murders. I insisted on sleeping at Rachel’s, away from Jen’s strep throat. Even after my sister died, Norwood Drive didn’t scare me.
Aside from the Cannings, who kept to themselves, we knew everyone on this street. Norwood Drive was its own little municipality; everyone had a role. Mr. Brenner, a widower who was about a thousand years old, walked the neighborhood every day, stooped over, arms held behind his back. If he stopped you to talk, you’d have to forget about your plans for the next hour. Mrs. Shaw, the neighborhood watch, who would pick up the phone to tell you that your garbage can had blown over from the wind—she saw it from the front window.
Susan lived three houses down from us, which meant we had little interaction with the Cannings. Their house was on the dead end. Jack Canning’s mother had a stroke after her son was labeled a murderer, and went into a nursing home; the house foreclosed. A Bank Owned sign is still on the front lawn. Last year, Mr. Brenner died.
New families moved into the Brenners’ and the Berrys’ and our house. The only people left who might have known Ethan McCready are the Shaws, who were friendly with my family. If I show up at their doorstep, they’ll make a phone call to my mom as soon as I leave. That can’t happen. Tom can’t know I came here to ask questions about Ethan McCready.
I climb back on my bike and make a right at the corner, heading for the next block over. A narrow wood clearing separates Spruce Street from Norwood Drive. My mother never let me play near the stream when I was younger. Before all the terrible things that happened on this block, the thing that scared her the most was one of us drowning in six inches of water.
At the moment, Spruce Street is livelier than Norwood Drive. Two kids about Petey’s age are kicking a soccer ball around on the front yard of a two-story house. Across the street, a woman is raking leaves. She looks up, pauses when she sees me.
I glide to a stop at the foot of her driveway. Her house is familiar; I have a flash of trick-or-treating for the last time, in seventh grade. I got a pack of organic fruit gummies from this house. When I got home and showed my mother, she rolled her eyes, the same way she used to whenever I reminded her Rachel’s mother didn’t let her drink soda.
“Excuse me,” I say to the woman. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
She leans against the handle of her rake. “I’ve already heard about the good word of the Lord.”
It takes me a beat to realize that she’s joking. I return her smile. “I used to live around here.”
The woman gives me a once-over, the skin on her forehead crinkling. “Thought you looked familiar.”
I nod at the trash bag at her feet. “Do you want help?”
She doesn’t answer. Just picks it up and hands me the trash bag. “Hold that open for a sec.”
“Did you live in that house on Norwood that sold this summer?” She dumps an armful of leaves into the bag, keeping an eye on me.
“Yeah.”
She pauses, her businesslike expression softening a bit. She must know who I am, what happened in my house, but she doesn’t bring it up and I’m thankful for it. “Where did your family move?”
“Waverly Estates,” I say. And I hate it. The thought is automatic. I would rather still live here, because it’s where we’re supposed to be.
“So what brings you back?”